Amazon’s Loaned $3B To SMBs Since 2017

Amazon announced news on Wednesday (Jan. 10) that during 2017, more than 300,000 U.S.-based small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) joined Amazon Marketplace.

In a press release, Amazon said billions of products were sold worldwide on its platform last year, with half of those items coming from SMBs operating on Amazon Marketplace. Many of those businesses also tapped Amazon’s Fulfilment by Amazon, which provides them with access to the eCommerce giant’s logistics network, making their items Prime-eligible.

“More and more, small and medium-sized businesses are choosing to join the Amazon Marketplace and sell right alongside Amazon to reach customers around the world. Entrepreneurs and small business owners are succeeding on Amazon — they sell half the products that Amazon customers buy, and more than 140,000 small and medium-sized businesses surpassed $100,000 in sales on Amazon in 2017,” said Peter Faricy, VP for Amazon Marketplace, in the press release. “These businesses are reinvesting in their local communities, creating jobs and supporting local suppliers. We are proud of how the Amazon Marketplace helps empower so many small businesses, not just in the U.S., but around the world.”

According to Amazon, SMBs come from all over the United States and from more than 130 countries around the globe. Of the billions of dollars in orders from those businesses during 2017, more than 1 billion occurred during the holiday season. Among last year’s highlights, Amazon Lending surpassed $3 billion lent to small businesses since the program started in 2011.

The eCommerce giant also said that, during 2017, Amazon Handmade expanded and now has 10 categories and more than 1 million handcrafted items from thousands of artisans and small business owners in the U.S. and 60 countries around the globe.

“U.S. SMBs are [increasingly] going online as another sales channel to sell direct to customers and are making more and more doing it — in 2017, more than 140,000 SMBs on Amazon made over 100K; this is a 40 percent YOY increase,” Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke said in a tweet.